One Thousand Deaths
by InterNutter
Summary: More on the Iterations of Chell idea. This is sort of a prequel to A New Slice but is capable of standing on its own. Don't read if you hate character death. Apologies for the sucky formatting. FFN removed the spaces between sections and I can't fix. Grr


Disclaimer: I don't own Portal, and if I did, I'd be busy working on a sequel already :) Instead, I'm working on crackfic.

ObInfo: More on the iterations of Chell. I'm not actually writing one thousand deaths. Just a mix of real and imagined ones.

One Thousand Deaths

InterNutter

"Please be advised that a noticeable taste of blood is not part of any test protocol, but is an unintended side effect of the Aperture Science Material Emancipation Grid, which may, in semi-rare cases, emancipate dental fillings, crowns, tooth enamel, and teeth."

Chell was more worried about what was happening on the other side of the windows. People were running... but it wasn't running for fun, like she and the other daughters of Aperture Science were doing before it was her turn in the maze. They were running like they were scared.

Some were falling.

She ran through the portal at the first opportunity and saw a clearer window. One of the techs was dead. Her name was Joan.

GLaDOS spoke again. "Do not be alarmed. A special protocol has been initiated. You are an... excellent... test subject."

People in hazmat suits ran past the open doors. One of them was carrying a sphere.

"I will not be stopped," said GLaDOS. "This is... too important. I can not let you go, subject name here."

The air changed. A strange smell. A hint of green. She ran for the gun, ran through the door, straight for the emancipation grid.

But it was already too late.

She didn't live to see the next chamber.

"Hello, and... again... welcome to the Aperture Science Computer Aided Enrichment Centre..."

Chell didn't listen to the rest of the words. She'd just been here. Less than... twenty minutes ago. Something had been wrong through the windows. She could see a glimpse of an office. A still office. There used to be people. Movement.

And speaking of movement, she had an incredible sense of Deja Vu in all the rooms. Right up to the room with the gun. Something horrible had happened in there.

Real fear followed her through a supposedly simple test. She remained huddled in the lift for half an hour, rubbing the heelsprings.

She'd put them on, last time. There had been a last time. With people and blood and horror.

This time, they were surgically implanted. She would never be rid of them.

The next test was unfamilliar, but still easy. The empty offices baulked her. Where were the people who were supposed to be watching? Where were the workers?

She got her answer in the sixth test room. A man in a hazmat jumpsuit fell backwards, slamming into a window, but not breaking it. Blood oozed over the glass, and something decidedly not human moved out view.

She moved a fraction too far in the wrong direction. The high-energy pellet burned as it hit her left shoulder. Crushed her as it headed towards the floor, unrelenting.

"Hello, and... again... welcome to the Aperture Science Computer Aided Enrichment Centre..."

She was shivering, uncontrollably. Feeling for buckles that were no longer there, in the aparatus placed just under her knees.

There were rivets. They went straight into her bones.

Anticipation of the nightmares slowed her down. Hunger ate at her. There had to be cake. There had to be something. Some kind of refreshment.

There had to be something horrid around the next corner.

By the time she reached room 6, she remembered her previous deaths in agonizing detail. It was hunger that drove her. GLaDOS promised her cake.

There had to be cake, soon.

"Please note that we have added a consequence for failure," said GLaDOS. "Any contact with the chamber floor will result in an unsatisfactory mark on your official testing record, followed by death. Good luck."

That greenish-brown stuff didn't look healthy.

But... when she'd been watching... it had been bubbles. Harmless, happy soap bubbles.

God and GLaDOS only knew what that stuff was.

Goal. Get across the room.

She shot a portal nearby. Stepped out onto the platform... and right into the path of the pellet that she hadn't been watching.

"Hello, and... again... welcome to--"

Chell screamed. And screamed. And screamed. She couldn't stop screaming. All the way to the eighth chamber. She'd died here. She knew she'd died here.

She knew how she'd died here.

That made her more careful.

Move the pellet, then move herself. It took a while, but she made it.

It was almost a relief to reach the lift.

"The Enrichment Centre regrets to inform you that this next test is impossible. Make no attempt to solve it."

Someone had left tools.

Under a platform.

Chell siezed them and stuffed them inside her jumpsuit. Maybe the emancipation grid wouldn't detect them if they were close to her body.

"The Enrichment Centre apologises for this clearly broken test chamber."

Chell sat on the cube. The weighted storage cube.

Storage.

If she had tools...

The circle could be pried open. The corners had catches on the inside. She could open it and find out what the weight was.

Tightly packed supplies. Random papers. Magazines that were years old and a calendar that was years older.

The woman in the red bikini had been her mother.

Chell carefully tore that page out and stowed it in her jumpsuit.

Milk and beans and water refreshed her. And the tube delivered a fresh cube once most of its remains were vaporized by the grid.

"Give up now, and... CAKE... will be served immediately."

That was the tenth time GLaDOS had said that.

Chell was starting to think that GLaDOS was a liar.

Time to think for herself.

Once she realized the way out, it was deceptively easy.

GLaDOS had corrupted files. Her speech was garbled in the next room. Something about momentum.

It was easy to get up the stairs, but the next part of the test... with the dark walls and the moving parts. She slipped. Hit her head on a stair.

"Hello, and... again... welcome to the Aperture Science..."

Chell didn't bother screaming, any more. She didn't bother arguing with GLaDOS either. She knew she'd died. She knew she was going to die. The only question was where and when.

"The Enrichment Centre promises to always a safe testing environment. In dangerous testing environments, the Enrichment Centre promises to always provide useful advice. For instance: 'The floor here will kill you. Please try to avoid it.'"

This was it. This was the place.

She ran full tilt through the portal and, aiming one last, rude gesture at the cameras, sank into the toxic, green goo.

It was excruciatingly painful.

"Hello, and... again... welcome..."

Would GLaDOS never let her go?

Would there never be peace?

She was going insane. She knew she was going insane. There was just beans and milk and water and old, old paper in the cubes. Sometimes hardware and basic kitchenalia... even that endlessly looping radio. A test of her enginuity? Or simply GLaDOS going just as insane as she was.

Suicide was pointless.

Thinking was essential.

Nevertheless, death was mind-bogglingly easy.

She holed up inside the walls of a room full of guns. Lived in there, left proof.

The cake was a lie. She had to remind herself. In case GLaDOS ever found a way to make her forget. It was important to leave that message. It was essential.

This cube had a marker.

Chell smiled. She could leave another type of message.

She emerged from her hole and eliminated two turrets, then with care and precision, marked where to place the portals for her next self. Purloined tools from the cubes - she took care to leave spares, now - made it easy for her to bugger with the cube dispenser. Enough cubes, and she could do anything.

So of course, GLaDOS only gave her one cube in the next room.

"This weighted companion cube will accompany you through the test chamber. Please take care of it."

Not that it mattered. The high energy pellet got her.

"Hello, and... again... welcome..."

"Fuck you," Chell muttered. She ran through the first sixteen rooms like a robot, not even stopping at her former lair.

There had to be a reason GLaDOS called the cube a 'companion'. Chell used it as a shield to get past the first pellet.

"The symptoms most commonly produced by Enrichment Center testing are superstition, perceiving inanimate objects as alive, and hallucinations. The Enrichment Center reminds you that the weighted companion cube will never threaten to stab you and, in fact, cannot speak."

Pink, friendly hearts gave absolutely no indication of sentience, cogniscience, or any other twitch of vitality. Chell sat between the two pellet emitters. Watching the one in the next corridor bounce back and forth and explode.

She's right. I won't stab you.

Chell looked at the cube. It had no mouth. How could it speak?

I don't have any arms. In both senses of the word.

She laughed at that. Her cube was funny.

I'd wait for the next pellet to be born, said the cube. Use me as a shield. I'll protect you.

She hugged him once they were safe in the next chamber.

"The Enrichment Center reminds you that the weighted companion cube cannot speak. In the event that the weighted companion cube does speak, the Enrichment Center urges you to disregard its advice."

Don't listen to her, said the cube. She lies.

With the cube's help, she redirected two pellets. He got so burned in the process. She appologised so many times.

I don't mind, Chell. I was made for this.

So hungry.

The last switch was set up in such a way that, no matter who stood on the button for the second door, they would be in the path of the last energy pellet.

This was a suicide room.

Once more, she holed up inside the walls, leaving her essential messages for her next self.

She would starve slowly, or scald in the unyielding force of the energy pellet.

Open me, said her cube.

"But you'll die."

I know where there's cake, Chell. GLaDOS doesn't have it.

"But you'll die."

I have the cake. It's inside. Waiting for you.

"I don't want you to die."

I'm just another box, Chell. You know how to open me.

"I love you," she whispered.

I know.

She screamed herself hoarse as she tore one of his hearts off. Wept without tears as she took him apart.

There was cake.

Powdered.

In a packet.

The instructions said it needed an egg, two tablespoons of oil and water. And an oven.

All she had was some water, a pot, and one of Aperture Science's computers. She knew by now how to bugger the last one into a hotplate.

She made cake porridge.

Her cube hadn't lied to her.

All those faces in the ancient papers... they meant nothing. Faces of the dead. There was only one face that mattered, in the inside of her cube. The face of her cube.

She made this place a shrine for him.

Then she walked into the path of the last pellet. Finger upraised at the ever-watching eye of GlaDOS.

"Hello, and... again... welcome to the Aperture Science..."

She woke crying. Her cube had died for nothing. She stepped into the path of the first camera she could see and screamed at her. Screamed out her hate and spite and desire for vengeance.

"Why do you have to keep killing me? Why did he have to die? Why are you doing this?"

"Aperture Science," said GLaDOS. "We do what we must, because we can."

She fell to the floor and wept.

"What are you doing? Stop it."

She couldn't help herself. All this death. All this dying. What was it for? It certainly wasn't for cake.

"Please proceed to the chamber lock."

Chell gave the camera the finger.

"He is waiting for you," said GlaDOS.

That got her sitting up. "He died."

"So did you. You are alive again. He is alive again."

GLaDOS went back to script as she ran through her paces. Just to be with her cube again. Just to reach the one solace in this sterile void of tests.

Once there, she didn't move from the first chamber. Just sat and held her cube.

GLaDOS was silent. Watching. Always watching.

Chell?

"Yes, Cube?"

I must accompany you through the test chamber. It is what I am made for.

"GLaDOS said that. GLaDOS lies."

Do you see the button?

"Yes." It was on the other side of glass she couldn't smash. If she could just break the glass, neither of them would have to go through the death trap.

Where do all good cubes belong?

"On... buttons..."

Am I not a good cube?

"You're the best," she whispered. "You gave me cake."

Then take me to the button, please. It's something I must do.

"But I'll die. Or you'll die."

If one of us must die, the other will live for them. I promise.

"I have detected an error," said GLaDOS. "It will be... repaired."

"Come on, Cube," said Chell. "You have a date with a button."

Thank you.

She did the death trap first, stepping on the button at the last possible instant. It was so easy it astonished her.

She was going to get through this.

At last, they reached the button. The cube settled on it with a faint, grateful sigh.

"You did it! The weighted companion cube certainly brought you good luck," said GLaDOS. "However, it cannot accompany you for the rest of the test and, unfortunately, must be euthanized."

"What?" Chell shrieked. "How dare you? How dare you ask me to kill him?"

"Rest assured that an independent panel of ethicists has absolved the Enrichment Center, Aperture Science employees, and all test subjects for all moral responsibility for the companion cube euthanizing process."

Tears ran down her face. "No! I'm not doing it! I love him."

"Please place the Aperture Science Weighted Companion Cube in the Aperture Science Emergency Artificial Intelligence Incinerator."

This was worse than tearing him open for food.

This was worse than drowning in the toxic goop.

This was worse than the crushing heat of an energy pellet.

Go on without me.

"While it has been a faithful companion, your companion cube cannot accompany you through the rest of the test. If it could talk - and the Enrichment Center takes this opportunity to remind you that it cannot - it would tell you to go on without it because it would rather die in a fire than become a burden to you."

Would you leave me here alone? I know you hate being alone.

"I don't want you to die."

The test is almost over. Two more chambers and you're done.

"Burning is awful. I've been there."

"Although the euthanizing process is remarkably painful, 8 out of 10 Aperture Science engineers believe that the companion cube is most likely incapable of feeling much pain," said GlaDOS.

She's right. In the end, I'm just another cube.

"The companion cube cannot remain through the testing. State and local statutory regulations prohibit it from simply remaining here, alone and companionless. You must euthanize it."

Chell appologised. Lyrically. Endlessly. It was the most she'd spoken to anything in years. She went back and forth to the shrine room, adding things to the walls with her marker from a previous chamber.

But in the end, she pressed the button that opened the incinerator.

In the end, she picked him up and dropped him in.

In the end, she was devestated.

"You euthanised your faithful companion cube more quickly than any test subject on record. Congratulations."

Her world was emptiness, now. She was going to finish the test. She was going to find GLaDOS' heart... and burn it, too.

She made her cautious way through test chamber eighteen. Past vats of goo, defeated turrets, and the last button puzzle. Through dizzying heights, flinging herself to the exit.

Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered, she thought to herself. I have fought my way to GLaDOS, beyond the test chambers... to take back the companion cube you have stolen.

The bit at the beginning about her being baked sounded... weird. Had GLaDOS slipped a cog? Or was she just trying to psych Chell out?

Either way, she was now in the last test chamber.

Ball redirect. Catch the platform. Button-and-portal. Catch the platform again. Portal past the wall, Portal near the wall, and jump when there was enough room.

And there was the cake symbol. The end. She'd finished.

"Congratulations. The test is now over. All Aperture technologies remain safely operational up to 4000 degrees Kelvin. Rest assured that there is absolutely no chance of a dangerous equipment malfunction prior to your victory candescence. Thank you for participating in this Aperture Science computer-aided enrichment activity. Goodbye."

She could see the fire pit. And there was toxic goo underneath, right up until the flames. Nowhere to go.

Or so she was supposed to think.

There was a railing. And a wall behind it. Portal there. Portal nearby. Jump and... safe. A little scorched, but safe.

"What are you doing? Stop it! I-i-i-i-i-..." GLaDOS was obviously upset. Something had gone wrong with her plan. "Weeee are pleased that you made it through the final challenge where we pretended we were going to murder you. We are very very happy for your success. We are throwing a party in honor of your tremendous success. Place the device on the ground, then lie on your stomach with your arms at your sides. A party associate will arrive shortly to collect you for your party. Make no further attempt to leave the testing area. Assume the 'Party Escort Submission Position' or you will miss the party."

There was a door... one with a key-code. Anyway, she couldn't place the device down. It felt like it was bonded with her arm.

Therefore, this was another lie.

There was damage, across the room, upwards. Something had left a big hole.

Portal up the wall. Portal closer. Ready for a double-fling and...

She missed. By millimeters.

The final indignity was that she landed on a platform, just as it submerged itself into the fire.

What an odd dream. Talking cubes and puzzles and fire pits and... and this room, too.

"Hello, and... again... welcome to the Aperture Science Computer Aided Enrichment Centre."

And that voice, too.

Chell went through the portal. Everything was just like her dream. The cubes, the buttons. The puzzles.

Except the companion cube didn't talk.

And there was evidence that someone had been hiding in some of the rooms. Camps and supplies and tools and markers.

Something made her add a tally-mark to the tallies already there.

The cake, according to the graffito, was a lie.

It was her only real motivation. Pass the test and get past the dream. And have some cake.

She trusted GLaDOS. All the way to the fire.

She woke screaming. Only a dream. It had to be only a dream. Something was wrong with the AI running this place. She had to get out. Pass the tests and get out.

The dreams helped her immensely.

And then the nightmare became real.

Sliding inexorably towards the fire.

Not this time.

She portalled her way out. Ignored GLaDOS and flung her way across the room.

There. A passageway.

She'd taken one of the markers from one of the lairs, and etched arrows anywhere she'd been confused.

She'd been everywhere else, before. She had to leave signs for when she'd be here again. In case this, too, was a dream.

The bullets felt real, though. Very real.

Chell woke to music. Music that made her want to strangle the composer for making such a tinny, jumpy, happy and above all endless little tune.

Why it was playing on the radio was anyone's guess.

"Hello, and... again... welcome to the--"

Deja Vu hit like a speeding truck.

Fuck GLaDOS. Fuck her in whatever orifii she had to fuck. Especially the painful ones.

She ran the gauntlet, picking up markers and tools to hide in her jumpsuit. She'd need supplies, and they could be tricky. Tools, though, opened up a multitude of opportunities. Tools could bugger with the cube tubes.

She set up a few lairs, along the way. Figured it all out. Right up to the grille.

The marker was running out, again. Forcing her to be ornate with the arrows.

Chell portalled her way up.

The guns started firing.

Chell woke to music.

I'm going to have to stop waking up like this, she thought. The dreams were real, she knew. The dreams told her where to be careful and what to watch out for.

She'd been through the maze many times. Sometimes, she counted her passages in the lairs. Other times, she would pass them by.

She had an objective.

Reach GLaDOS and kill her.

Somehow.

This time, she hid from the guns near a column. Used a mixture of portals and subterfuge to eliminate them. One by one.

When they were gone, it was just a matter of flinging herself up to the next area.

Just two turrets. GLaDOS was either running out or giving up.

Chell portalled them to their doom, and moved ever upwards.

To the offices.

To the walkway.

To GLaDOS herself.

"Well you found me, congratulations. Was it worth it? Because despite your violent behavior, the only thing you've managed to break so far is my heart. Maybe you could settle for that and we'll just call it a day. I guess we both know that isn't going to happen. You chose this path, now I have a surprise for you."

The door was shut. There was no way out.

"Deploying surprise in five... four... three... two... one."

Out of pure instinct, Chell dodged and ran. But it was only cake.

The cake wasn't a lie.

There was a piece cut for her.

"Congratulations," said GLaDOS. "You have won."

Chell took a big bite. Chewed. Swallowed. There was a bitter aftertaste behind the sweetness.

"You have won a quick and relatively painless death."

She was right. The poison hardly hurt at all.

Hello music. Hello cell. Hello, eyes of GLaDOS, who I must destroy.

As soon as she was able, she took out every eye she could. Did as much damage as she was able.

All the way to the fire. Past the fire. Into the labyrinth and towards the monster at the end.

She didn't listen to GLaDOS' speach. Flung the cake as far as she could throw it.

"Don't you like your cake? It was delicious and moist."

It killed her, last time. She wasn't going to have any now.

"Would you like some peptic salve? Well I don't have any! You can't have it! You didn't finish your cake."

Something fizzed. Sparked. A sphere dropped.

"Time out for a second. Do you see that thing that fell out of me? What is that?"

Curious, she prodded it with a foot. It neither said nor did anything.

"I have no idea what it is. It is not part of any test protocol."

Maybe that thing was why she'd gone so wrong. The connections had been bad the whole time. Chell rolled it over to look at the wires. Straightforward plugs. A child could reconnect it.

Assuming they could reach the high point where it had fallen out.

Chell got a chair and lifted the sphere into place.

She couldn't keep steady.

And fell.

The sphere neatly crushed her head.

The sphere wouldn't go back in. She couldn't fix GLaDOS.

Chell jumped down before she could fall and considered the sphere.

She was in a locked room with a mad AI and no supplies.

But there was an incinerator.

If she couldn't fix things, the least she could do was end the cycle. Even with her past memories as dreams, it wasn't hard to figure out that she'd been going through this maze for a subjective eternity.

GLaDOS was starting to repeat herself. Chell ignored her and placed the purple sphere by the incinerator, then raced to the button.

One way or another, this was going to end.

"Good news. I just figured out what that thing you just incinerated did. It was a morality core. They installed it to make me stop flooding the Enrichment Centre with a deadly neurotoxin, after I flooded the Enrichment Centre with a deadly neurotoxin. So get comfortable while I warm up the neurotoxin emitters."

Green poured out of vents. A countdown began along the walls.

Chell had five minutes left.

And GLaDOS had a turret.

Chell fired her portals and grinned. She was going to win.

GLaDOS had some kind of weir gravity thing that put the spheres in odd places. Portals made that pointless. Almost.

The last one was a bitch. She had to redirect herself a couple of times before she knocked it out of the air.

Time was running out.

She portalled her way into destroying the last sphere. The last explosion rocked the room. GLaDOS's voice sped up, making her chirp like a chipmunk. Clouds of insects orbitted her as she collapsed onto herself.

There really were bugs in her system.

Chell rose up into the light with the junk falling upwards.

"There... really... was... a... caaaaaaake..." said GlaDOS.

The light filled her view. Chell closed her eyes.

And opened them to blue skies.

Bits of GLaDOS were still falling from the air. On fire. The air stank of burning silicone and plastic, but it tasted wonderful.

Free. She was free.

Chell closed her eyes for a well-earned rest.


End file.
